Contributions to GOP presidential candidates

The good people over at Development Seed, a creative data visualization and cartography team in Washington, D.C., have collected FEC data (current as of Aug. 15) on individual contributions to GOP presidential candidates and mapped the information in an unusually beautiful map. I've embedded the map below and posted a much larger version here.

Before you dive in, here are Development Seed's instructions on using the map (and yeah, the Tim Pawlenty campaign lives on in this map!):

Each dot on this map represents $100 donated to a 2012 GOP presidential candidate. The colors of the dots correspond with the candidate names in the legend. The dots are randomly placed throughout the area of each ZIP Code. Hover on or tap a point in the map to see summary information about donations from a particular ZIP Code. Hold 'shift' and drag around an area to zoom into it. Locate a specific address by clicking the location button to enter an address. Click on a candidate's name to show only that candidate's donations. Click again on that same candidate's name to return to showing all donations.